


your hands did this (this is how you live with it)

by notcaycepollard



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Coulson no, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Why do I do this to myself, references to controlled!Daisy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 03:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6783358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcaycepollard/pseuds/notcaycepollard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So," he says, trying to get back to professional, "Daisy. What can I do for you?"</p><p>"No," Daisy tells him, her face serious again, and intent, "no, Steve, it's not- I think. <em>We</em> think. We think you can do something for you. For Bucky," and her words take the air right out of Steve's lungs in a rush.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your hands did this (this is how you live with it)

Six months after Steve drops the shield, he gets a call from Nat.

"Someone you should meet," she says, and sends him the coordinates, and Steve might be out of the game but he owes Natasha, he  _owes_ her, so he makes the meet.

He goes alone, wondering what to expect. Nat hasn't given him any details, but she'd sounded very serious, and Steve feels the lack of his shield at his back like he hasn't before now. The coordinates send him way out, the edge of the city where a long-dead industrial zone gives way to stretches of cornfield, and he parks his bike, turns up the collar of his jacket, sticks his hands in his pockets. There's someone leaning against a crumbling brick wall, and he gets closer, hopes it isn't a trap. Nat wouldn't have let him walk into a trap so easily, but-

"Hey, Captain," she says, easy like she knows him, and Steve blinks, studies her face. She's young, younger than he expects, of maybe Chinese descent, and short hair in waves around her face, high cheekbones, an expression that he almost recognizes. She straightens up, shoves her hands in the pockets of her own leather jacket, tilts her head. "How's retirement working out?"

"Fine," Steve says, reflexive. "It's fine. Look, I don't know you, do I?"

"No," she agrees, pushing off the wall and squaring her shoulders. "No. We have a friend in common. Well. An employer, I guess. That's not why I'm here."

"What-" Steve says, and she smiles, runs her fingers through her hair.

"Look," she interrupts, "sorry, I- I've gotta say, it is  _crazy_ to meet you, I heard so much, he'd be so  _mad_ , anyway, I- Daisy."

"Steve," Steve says, a little bemused, and shakes her hand.

"Yeah," Daisy laughs, "yeah, I know," and she has a look in her eye that Steve recognizes. It's Peggy's look, the one that says  _oh my god can I touch you_ , and Steve blushes, involuntary, and drops her hand.

"So," he says, trying to get back to professional, " _Daisy_. What can I do for you?"

"No," Daisy tells him, her face serious again, and intent, "no, Steve, it's not- I think.  _We_ think. We think we can do something for you. For Bucky," and her words take the air right out of Steve's lungs in a rush.

 

It's cold, threatening to rain, and they sit side by side in Daisy's SUV. There's a long silence at first, Daisy looking at her hands, and then she turns to him, tucks a strand of hair behind one ear.

"I can take you to my base," she says. "If you want to see it, before asking him. If you want to understand what it is."

"Your  _base_ ," Steve repeats, and Daisy nods. "Wait, you're not-"

"Hydra?  _No_ ," Daisy says. "No. You think Natasha would have passed on my message, if we were?"

"Then how..."

"You ran the Avengers," Daisy says easily. "I'm like you, I guess. A little. I have my own team. Like the Avengers, except less, you know, famous."

"Your own team," Steve says, and holds himself back from adding  _you're barely old enough to vote_ , because she might be young but she's got a jawline that says she understands command.

"Yeah," Daisy agrees, "my own team, and a couple of bases, and some equipment that we think will do what it is you're looking for." It feels too good to be true. Something that will pull the commands out of Bucky's head, will put him back in control. Steve doesn't want to hope.

"I need to see," he says, cautious, and Daisy nods.

"Yeah, it'll be easier to show than tell, and I'm not the scientist, anyway. You can ask them whatever you need."

"Okay," Steve says, "okay. Take me to your base," and Daisy smiles, flicks on the comms in her ear.

"We're ready," she says, "May, you wanna pick us up?" and a Quinjet drops out of the sky. Steve stares.

"You're really not Hydra," he asks again, questioning, and Daisy laughs a little, smiles at him bland and easy and professional.

"No," she says, "no, Steve, we're- we're what's left of SHIELD."

 

He doesn't really believe it at first. SHIELD  _fell_ , and Hydra set fire to the ruins, and the governments of the world picked over the ashes left behind. He doesn't know  _what_ she is, but he trusts her when she says she's not Hydra, and he trusts her when she says they can help. Perhaps he's just desperate. But he's not Captain America anymore, and if he wants to trust this girl with serious eyes and a smile that feels too familiar, that's his own business.

When they land, walk out of the Quinjet and through the hangar doors, Steve stops dead in the hallway. It's so familiar he thinks at first he must have been here, not this time around but seventy years ago. He almost expects Howard to walk out from the lab he can just see at the far end of the corridor.

"This was..."

"An SSR base, yeah. Set up just after the war. Lots of Agent Carter's files in storage, too, we've been working to digitize but we, uh, we're a little under-resourced." She touches his shoulder, very cautious like she doesn't want to startle him or  _hurt_ him, maybe, and he blinks, takes a deep breath. "Come on," she says, "I'll take you to meet the Director."

"Not Fury."

"No," she agrees. "Not Fury."

When they reach the office door, she knocks once, pushes it open and waits for him to enter. Stands in the doorway, almost as if she doesn't want to come in any further.

"Director," she says, and he looks up from his files, smiles wide at them both.

"Hey, Tremors. It's been a while, huh? How's the Cocoon?"

"It's fine," Daisy says, and Steve's pretty sure her voice is tight like she's trying too hard to sound casual, "it's fine, the team's great. Yo-Yo says she misses you. Drop by, sometime," and he nods, stands up, holds out his hand to Steve.

"Mack," he introduces himself. "Director Mackenzie, technically, but just call me Mack, everyone else does. Daisy, you coming in?"

"Oh-" she says, soft, and closes the door behind her, shoves her hands in her pockets a little awkwardly. Steve glances between her and Mack, tries to work out the thread of tension, but there's too much going on under the surface to decipher.

"Steve Rogers, Director," he says, "but you know that already, I guess."

"Yeah," Mack laughs, "yeah, you're kind of famous, alright. You want a seat?"

"I'm good standing," Steve says, and Mack shrugs, leans back against the desk. Steve can't help but look around, and when he does, Mack laughs again, a little embarrassed. 

"Sorry about the, uh, the memorabilia. Must be weird having your face on all this stuff. Belonged to the guy here before me, I didn't-"

"Agent Coulson," Steve interrupts. "This was Agent Coulson's office?" and in the corner, Daisy makes a noise like she's clearing her throat.

"Yeah," Mack says, "yeah, that was him," and Steve frowns.

"He's been gone for a while," he says, glances at Mack and then at Daisy, and she bites her lip, looks away. Mack shrugs.

"Didn't feel right, taking it down," he says, "and I don't mind it so much. We can go down into the lab, if it's a thing?"

 _I could sign it, if you want_ , Steve wants to say. He never did sign the baseball cards. Couldn't sign it Captain America, though, and nobody's asking for his autograph these days.

 

The lab, the machines, they're deeply upsetting to look at. But they might,  _might_ , actually work, and Steve's willing to suggest it, at least. Willing to pull Bucky back out of the tank and offer it to him, and it might be cruel but Steve's heart is hammering with the possibility of it.

"Yes," he says, "okay, yeah, yes. It. It's worth a shot."

"I hoped it would be," Daisy says, "come on, we can take a Quinjet. Wakanda, right?"

"You know  _entirely too much_ about supposedly secret secrets," Steve tells her, and Daisy rolls her eyes, suddenly reminds him very strongly of Natasha.

"You knew Agent Coulson," he says quietly when they're on the plane, and he might be retired but it doesn't take a super-soldier's reflexes to catch the way she flinches.

"Yeah," she says after a moment. "I knew him. He, uh. He recruited me to SHIELD, actually."

"Really?" Steve asks, looks at her again. She can't be over thirty. "That must have been just about when he- I mean, when- when New York happened."

"Just about," Daisy agrees, and looks away again, and pulls the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands.

"I'm sorry," Steve says, soft and careful, and Daisy grits her jaw, swallows, blinks away tears.

"It's fine," she says. "Like you said. He's been gone for a while."

 

In Wakanda, Daisy looks so intrigued by their tech that Steve's actually a little suspicious.

"You didn't come here just to steal our secrets, did you?"

"Please," Daisy says, rolls her eyes again, but she's got the kind of sharp-eyed interest that Steve absolutely associates with spies in general and Natasha in specifics looking to pick up some new secrets, so. And then Bucky takes a gasping breath, and Steve can't focus on anything else. "I'll give you some privacy," Daisy murmurs, steps away, and Steve watches as the techs wrap Bucky in a soft-looking blanket.

"You okay?" he asks Bucky, and he shivers, unfocused and then hyper-focused in the space of a blink.

"Cold," he admits, "Steve, what's with the-"

"Natasha got a call," Steve tells him, "got them in contact with me. It's SHIELD, Buck. What's left of SHIELD. And- they said they can help." Bucky's hand trembles, and he sets his jaw, presses his lips together, blows out a long breath.

 

Bucky looks at the machines like they're distressing, and Steve's ready to say no,  _no, this was a mistake, I'm sorry, this was- I was wrong_ , when he drops his shoulders, looks up through his eyelashes.

"This is Hydra tech," he says flatly, and Daisy just nods, touches the arc of it.

"Yeah," she agrees. "It is, yeah. We retrieved it a while ago."

"And it works," he says, no inflection, and Daisy nods again.

"I promise," she says. "I  _promise_. It's not nice. It's not- it hurts, I'm not going to lie. But yeah, it works."

"You've been through it?" Steve asks in surprise. "Why?" and she looks at him, glances over at Director Mackenzie, fidgets with her jacket sleeve.

"I joined a cult," she tells him, very deliberately light, her face giving away nothing at all, and Steve knows he's getting maybe a quarter of the story at the most.

"I don't care if it hurts," Bucky says then. "I want- I- this is the best chance I've got, Steve."

"Yeah," Steve says. "Yeah, I know, Buck."

"Will I forget all the things I've done?" he asks Daisy, and she glances at the scientist with them, the doctor, the one who'll carry out the brain scans and deprogramming. Steve's forgotten her name already.

"Do you want to?" she asks. "We can pull it out of your head, if you want," and Daisy goes very, very still.

"No," Bucky says. "I remember everything. I _want_ to remember everything."

"It wasn't you," Steve insists. "You had no choice."

"But I did it," Bucky whispers, hollow, and Steve's about to reach out, to touch his shoulder, to do  _something_ , when Daisy says it instead.

"Your own hands," she says, and Bucky looks up, nods very slowly.

"My hands," he agrees, "I did it," and Daisy looks at him for a long, long moment.

 

"She's like me," Bucky says later, quiet to Steve even though they've been given their own bunk, their own space, and Steve frowns in surprise.

"I didn't-"

"You can see it in her eyes," Bucky says, and Steve wonders what it is Bucky recognizes.

Daisy tells him, in the end. He doesn't have to ask. He's waiting in the bunk, not allowed in the lab while it all happens, and Daisy comes in, sits down on the bed next to him. Looks at her hands, and then leans her shoulder against his.

"I wasn't brainwashed," she says. "Not like- Hydra's done it a lot, to other people. I wasn't brainwashed, but I was... controlled. Ordered to kill people who tried to stop us."

"And you did," Steve guesses.

"Yeah," Daisy says. "I did. I couldn't even- there was no space to resist. I'm... I have powers. I don't need weapons to be dangerous. I'm a weapon all on my own. Mack tried to talk me down, and I, I wasn't here, but Jemma told me it took him weeks to recover. I warned them to stay away, to stop, not to help me. I didn't want to be helped."

"I couldn't not," Steve says, "I couldn't stop looking," and Daisy nods like she understands.

"You love him," she says simply. "It doesn't matter how, but you had to. I get that. It was. It was the same, for me. And I, I _know_ that wasn't me, the one that didn't want help. But it was me who did it. My hands. I live with that." There's a tiny tremor, the door rattling in its frame, and Daisy takes a deep breath. "The machine," she says, "I didn't want it to take that away."

"You want to remember," Steve asks, and Daisy nods.

"I do," she agrees, her voice soft and calm and careful. "I want to remember. I have to remember," and she takes Steve's hand, and in the silence, Steve wonders who it is she's lost.

 

**Author's Note:**

> hahaha i'm dying why did i do this to myself


End file.
